The Field Artillery Battery.

Its Past, Present and Future

To an artilleryman, the term "battery" is one of endearment. After all, it's unique to us--every branch has platoons, battalions and brigades, but only cannoneers, rocketeers and missilemen have batteries. The word itself comes from its ancient role, which was "to batter" down the walls of fortresses. It came to America, as did most of our military traditions, from our European forebears.

In our new age of technology, however, the days of the battery could be numbered. The futurists among us look to flatten organizations and do away with some intermediate headquarters. The future combat system (FCS) being contemplated portends a sameness of weapons and soldiers that, ultimately, promises a branch-less, hi-tech Army and an artillery force of sensors and shooters, centrally controlled by digital technology. Are we near the end of the days of branches and the traditions of Field Artillery and its batteries?

This article submits that the heyday of the FA battery may be yet to come--in fact, the FA battery may be among the most significant fighting organizations of the Interim Brigade Combat Team (IBCT) and the Objective Force of the 21st century Army.

The Evolution of the Battery. From the Revolutionary War until the build-up preceding the Mexican War, the term "company" was used to describe the number of pieces able to be maneuvered in battle by a single commander. As various British and French artillery texts were translated and the Army organization matured, the battery took its place.

The seminal work ushering in what became a heyday for the battery was Captain Robert Anderson's translation of the French "Instruction for Artillery, Horse and Foot," which was the basis for the "Instruction for Field Artillery, Horse and Foot" adopted by the War Department in March 1845. This work covered specifically the tactics, techniques and procedures (TTP) of serving the piece and maneuvering the field battery. [1]

Brevet-Major Samuel Ringgold modified these instructions in the field and organized the proto-typical "flying artillery" battery, that is, one equipped with light, highly mobile, horse-drawn field guns that achieved fame on the battlefields across Mexico. [2] Batteries from the Mexican War through the end of the century were identified by the name of the battery commander; thus Ringgold's and Duncan's batteries won distinction in 1846-47 as did Pelham's and Pegram's in the Civil War and Reilly's at the gates of Peking in 1900.

The make-up of a battery assumed familiar proportions by US Army General Order in 1861. "Each field battery is to be composed, if practicable, of six, and none to have less than four guns, those of each battery to be of uniform caliber." [3]

Significantly, these instructions and the performance of the flying batteries in the Mexican and Civil Wars established the principle that the FA battery was the basic building block of artillery task organization. This organizational concept changed little until World War I. It is important to note, however, that the battery was only a building block of a larger artillery force. "As for fighting purposes, it is well known that allowing batteries to go into battle alone is to be avoided...every effort [should be] made to bring all batteries of the brigade into action at the same time, that concentration of fire and weight of metal thrown may produce decisive results." [4] Thus was born the idea of massed artillery that became part of US Army fighting doctrine. Whenever possible, the three to five batteries in a division would be physically massed to achieve massed effects, sometimes hub-to-hub.

Of course, the great tactical distinction of the 19th century was that artillery was a direct fire weapon. A maneuver commander could see the primary enemy formations arrayed against him and would mass his artillery accordingly. Flying batteries would be concentrated at the point of attack in the offense or against the enemy's concentration in the defense.

When rifled muskets appeared, gun crews began to be picked off at long range by infantry sharpshooters, which inevitably forced a tactical revolution in Field Artillery--the First Revolution in American Artillery. As the 20th century progressed, artillery began to move rearward out of direct fire range and fire indirectly from defilade positions to targets identified by someone who could see the enemy. Firing instructions were passed from observers to batteries first by voice and then by hand, arm or flag signals or telephone. Firing batteries remained the building block of artillery--still four to six guns, still horse-drawn in World War I and then finally motorized or mechanized in World War II. [5]

Due to the increasing inaccuracies of longer ranges and indirect fires and the increasing mobility of motorized or armored units on the battlefield, all countries began to develop advanced technical gunnery techniques that enabled them to maneuver fires and not batteries. Such techniques were pioneered in World War I and became the focus of much interwar experimentation. The development of the fire direction center (FDC) by the Gunnery Department at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, was perhaps the single most important artillery development of the 20th century. [6]

By World War II, the advent of radio-equipped forward observers (FOs), surveyed gun positions and ballistic and meteorological computations were all giving indirect fire artillery the ability to mass fires at long ranges. At this point, artillery battalions became more important than batteries because it took more guns firing indirectly (thus less accurately) at the same target to achieve massed effects. This organizational concept of batteries, battalions and indirect fire artillery directed by an FDC remains to the present day, even though technological innovations in the 1980s began another revolution in artillery organization.

The State of the Battery. For hundreds of years, batteries had been positioned in one location with guns no farther than 50 meters apart to facilitate massed effects. This concept did not change for most of the 20th century, even though guns and rockets were firing indirectly at ranges of many miles with firing data calculated by a fire direction computer. If one wanted massed effects on the target, the guns of batteries had to be close together on the ground.

The traditional firing battery tactical employment concept (four to six guns in close proximity controlled by an FDC) remains in force today in all towed artillery battalions, which comprise 33 percent of the active Army artillery. Fully 70 percent of the battalions of the Army National Guard employ the traditional structure; thus, 56 percent of our artillery, some 84 battalions of the total force, [7] is organized and operates much like it did 50 to 60 years ago.

The 1980s and 90s saw the introduction of two weapons that ushered in the Second (and Latest) Revolution in American Artillery--the M270 multiple-launch rocket system (MLRS) and the Ml09A6 (Paladin) howitzer. Computer and communications technology combined to enable these weapons to operate virtually autonomously anywhere on the battlefield. On-board inertial navigation and firing data computation allow these weapons to spread out and fire autonomously but precisely with massed effects and at a rapid rate of fire.

Paladin and MLRS units now comprise 65 percent of our active force, 30 percent of the Army National Guard artillery and 44 percent of the total artillery force. Interestingly, these two systems are evolving to more and more similar organizations and concepts of operations. In the early 90s, Paladin battalions were organized with three batteries of eight guns each (3x8) while MLRS was organized as 3x9. Today, each type of battalion has six-weapon batteries (3x6) that each can operate in two platoons.

Both the Paladin and MLRS battalions can operate autonomously, and their best feature is the ability to shoot quickly with surveyed accuracy, even from the move. Both systems do their own position locating and technical fire control, and their computer screens are looking evermore alike, even though different companies developed them. Their fire control headquarters, whether an FDC, platoon operations center (POC) or battery operations center (BOC), is primarily engaged in tactical fire control and digital connectivity. While their munitions and range capabilities are different, they overlap, making the two systems highly complementary.

In sum, Paladin and MLRS batteries have much in common in their organization, tactics and even their fire control capabilities. These similarities indicate a closer cooperation in the future.

Meanwhile, the towed and non-digital self-propelled force also is organized similarly with six-gun batteries and one FDC. If simplicity is a virtue, then one can say that the good side of restructuring the force to 3x6 in the late 1990s has made all batteries of our artillery force similarly organized.

Our light forces have long been very good at tailoring their forces for quick deployment. They routinely train to deploy with platoon and battery packages of both 105-mm and 155-mm howitzers. US Army Europe (USAREUR) recently has developed similar techniques for deploying heavy artillery packages. Today's firing batteries, then, are smaller and more deployable.

So, the six-gun organization has its strengths. One weakness, however, spans digital and non-digital, towed and self-propelled batteries: FDCs have only one battery computer system (BCS), and with the end of the useful life of the back-up computer system (BUCS), there is no automated back-up. This weakness will not be fixed by initial versions of the advanced Field Artillery tactical data system (AFATDS).

Again, harking back to mid-century, many non-digital units have regenerated manual firing charts as a back up to BCS. This is particularly a problem with Paladin, as manual charts are impossible to manage for properly dispersed howitzers.

Only the MLRS battery has sufficient redundancy of computers, but no doubt the force structure gurus have their eyes on the three operations centers (two POCs and one BOC) in the battery. It must be remembered that MLRS has no manual capability and no capability for degraded mode. It is absolutely dependent on redundancy of fire control nodes. Of utmost significance is a new principle of digital warfare: Redundancy--with it, we will succeed; without it, we set ourselves up for catastrophic failure.

The Future of the Battery. The Army Chief of Staff's vision for a lighter, more deployable Army is a natural evolution from the Cold War to an environment of a less monolithic, but increasingly global threat and a predominantly continental US (CONUS)-based force. The present focus is on developing a medium-weight capability in units that can deploy quickly and operate without fixed forward bases yet have enough punch to slug it out and win campaigns decisively. Heavy forces must be more strategically deployable and more agile with smaller logistical demands. Light forces must be more lethal, survivable and tactically mobile. [8] Perhaps we have come full circle back to the concept of the heyday of the flying batteries.

A firing battery that can be dynamically tailored to add or subtract capabilities, depending on mission, enemy, terrain, troops and time available (METT-T), and can support the close fight, conduct counterfire and attack high-priority targets at long ranges is well within our grasp today. As suggested previously, Paladin and MLRS have evolved such that their technical and tactical fire control TTP are much the same. It is only a short step to develop a fire control architecture that can command and control either system. The next organizational innovation could be to develop a "Battery Team" concept under which both Paladin and MLRS batteries are similarly organized and routinely trained to operate with a mix of systems.

One Battery Team scenario, perhaps something similar to Task Force Hawk in Kosovo, may call for a significant rocket/missile capability with a lesser requirement for close support from cannon. A Battery Team of four MLRS launchers and two Paladins could deploy under one commander to operate across the spectrum of small-scale contingency (SCC) requirements. Paladins could fire illumination to assist infantry patrolling or aerial reconnaissance. If an armored threat appeared, rockets could suppress along routes for combat aviation. Hostile command posts could be attacked at long ranges by Army tactical missile system (ATACMS) missiles. All this could come from one battery.

In an SSC scenario with little or no armored threat, similar teams could be formed of M119A1s, M198s (both towed systems should be equipped with on-board communications and technical fire control computers) and the high-mobility artillery rocket system (HIMARS). Three pairs of two weapons each could provide a helicopter-delivered artillery raid package to operate across the entire SSC theater. HIMARS could carry a preponderance of ATACMS for strategic targets. Again, all this from one battery.

The seven characteristics of the future force can be met to a degree by these 21st century flying batteries. A well-trained Battery Team would be highly deployable in packages of capabilities, much like the XVIII Airborne Corps deploys today. It would be employable upon arrival and capable of simultaneously conducting close support, counterfire and operational or even strategic attack.

Such a battery would be responsive, able to move with speed and shoot with dominating firepower. It would be agile, operating at tactical, operational and strategic levels and could go from stability and support to high-intensity combat quickly. While just a battery, it would be extremely lethal in its 24-hour, all-weather fire capabilities, especially with smart precision munitions such as sense and destroy armor (SADARM) and the MLRS smart tactical rocket (MSTAR).

The two most difficult of the seven characteristics to satisfy are survivability and sustainability, both of which will take some work. Survivability will be enhanced by better situational awareness and the tactical dispersion enabled by the revolutionary digital capabilities already discussed. Most certainly, we need more precision munitions to be able to reduce ammunition requirements and meet collateral damage concerns of stability and support operations.

The Battery Team could be the next step after the IBCT to bridge the gap to our FCS-equipped Objective Force. The future force will repackage functional organizations to make them unit-centric, not platform-centric. Forces will be "mission tailored for tactical overmatch, but with a standard organizational base." [9] Because the focus of battle is migrating to smaller, more deployable units, the firing battery well could be the organizational base for the future force artillery. The Battery Team could presage the FCS-equipped firing battery and ensure a smooth transition from the IBCT to the Objective Force for the fires community.

The Role of Crusader. While the threat of high-intensity combat seems to have abated since Desert Storm, there are many plausible scenarios for major theater war involving heavy forces from many nations. Our Army still needs heavy forces, and we need them to be robust and equipped with the best technology.

As good as Paladin is, even today there are several howitzers in the world that can challenge its digital, automated capabilities. Automotively, it remains early 1960s technology, far slower than today's maneuver systems.

Crusader promises to bring additional agility, lethality, deployability and flexibility with fewer platforms due to its unprecedented rate-of-fire--in fact, a Crusader battery could provide the lethality of a Paladin battalion.

We need Crusader's speed and ability to maneuver with the infantry and armor. We need its ability to range across the breadth and depth of a distributed battlefield. We need it to provide the mass of a battalion with the footprint of a battery. Our modernization strategy calls for us to have tactical overmatch with smaller forces. Crusader will give it to us.

In sum, smaller and more lethal firing units are available to us today. The BOC could become the most significant artillery command and control node on the battlefield, replacing the battalion FDC of former times. In the days to come, tactical and operational commanders will be able to electronically "see" the extended battlefield and the enemy array somewhat like Zachary Taylor could see the battlefield of Buena Vista. The dynamically tailored Battery Team, equipped with Paladinized lightweight 155s, HIMARS and a BOC, could be flown to the critical point to support the IBCT with tactical, operational and strategic fires. Linked batteries of Crusaders and M270Als could dominate a heavy battlefield like no field batteries have since the Mexican War.

Are We Forgetting Something? While a smooth transition is within our grasp, there are challenges. Much of the downsizing, flattening and modernizing of our forces is at the expense of some age-old principles of war.

* Mass. One of these is the very important principle of mass. Columnist Richard Hart Sinnreich (Colonel, retired from the FA) asks the probing question: "Could a fighting force be built, using new tactics and the latest technologies, that would be light enough to transport by air, yet powerful and survivable enough to defeat heavy formations like those of Iran and Iraq?" [10] He questions whether such a lean force would be robust enough to survive the inevitable friction of war and be able to "slug it out" when certain technologies don't work as advertised. We again should go back to the battery's heyday and remember that "...allowing batteries to go into battle alone is to be avoided." [11]

There remain in the world at least six nations with heavy forces bigger than those of the United States and whose interests could one day lead to war. We must be prepared to deploy battalions of artillery equipped with area (dumb) munitions that can suppress the enemy, screen large areas with smoke and enable maneuver forces to close with and destroy superior enemy formations. We never will have enough precision munitions to win a heavy fight at long ranges with an enemy that outnumbers us. We must not forget that, ultimately, the battle that is decisive is the close one and that the most important mission of the Field Artillery is to support maneuver in the close fight at danger-close ranges.

* Simplicity. Sinnreich's point on friction challenges our entire command and control architecture. Clausewitz said that in war, even the easy things become difficult. We always have had redundant firing and fire control capabilities. They are being whittled away by "the downsizers." We are forgetting the fog and friction of war and the consequent need for back-up equipment and procedures when equipment breaks and things go wrong.

We see in peacetime, even in civilian Internet structures, how difficult it is to keep an automated network functioning. Everyone has experienced the frustration of servers on the Internet going down and this in a world where there is an effort to provide redundant servers to take up the slack.

Yet even today we have reduced the number of computers assigned to batteries and battalions and, more significantly, have reduced the number and the robustness of FDCs. Success on the digital battlefield, as seen at the National Training Center (NTC) at Fort Irwin, California, is all about sufficiency of command and control nodes with adequate computers and communications capability. For modern, digital artillery, it's all about redundant FDCs or POCs and BOCs with the right stuff. Our batteries must have redundancy if they are to function. In simpler times, we always could fall back on voice fire missions, BUCS or manual computations when computers went down. Those times are no more.

* The Human Dimension. There seems to be an assumption among many that somehow the shooting end of the artillery is automatic. Artillery batteries are complex, highly mobile organizations that always will be faced with a hostile enemy dedicated to disrupting or destroying them.

Most observers of artillery performance and modernization focus on either fire support structures (which get the blame when fires are not timely or accurate) or on some technological development, which will take the human out of the gun. The ultimate is a recent proposal for a box of missiles that can be remotely commanded to fire by a digital signal generated by a fire support computer. Another is a robotic artillery piece--a computer pulls the electronic lanyard.

These are the extremes, of course, of what already has begun. But have we introduced so many automated systems to replace human actions that we are losing our intuitive sense and the binding force that causes units to fight and win on the battlefield? This is clearly evident at the NTC where the senior fire support trainer writes, "We have lost the human dimension of warfare--the intimate bond between observers and firing batteries and all that comes with it: The ability to transcend quantitative data with intuitive judgement, the complex translation of emotions and instincts into action, the sense of urgency that comes from human need and the great sense of satisfaction from serving your fellow soldier." [12]

A principle that we, the entire Army, seem to be forgetting as we look to the future is that people fight wars, not technology. If we put a box of unmanned missiles out on the battlefield, we will find out the hard way that a resourceful, human enemy will find a way to shoot them back at us. The Army that gets robots to fight their wars will inevitably be defeated by humans who have minds, wills and emotions that are more effective than any computer. Soldiers will think, work and fight harder because they know why and for whom they fight.

Forward the Flying Batteries. In conclusion, the Field Artillery has a glorious history and strength of tradition. From its earliest days in the Mexican War, the artillery battery has flown to the point of attack and wreaked havoc on every foe from Santa Ana to Saddam Hussein. In the dark times, the artillery battery has erected a wall of steel around our beleaguered soldiers from Bastogne to the Ia Drang Valley.

A great debate about artillery organization arose in 1814 over a proposal to replace Field Artillery regiments and their traditions with functional battalions that combined artillery, engineers and ordnance. History records the failure of that effort because it failed to recognize the human dimension of a military unit. So far as the names of units were concerned, the changes were made, but "the organization actually given was but a soulless form, devoid of life, of that which could impart animation to the system." [13]

As we contemplate the future and decide whether to do away with or significantly alter our branches and their traditions, our Field Artillery and its batteries, we would do well to remember this failure of our forefathers. We also would do well to recognize that the Field Artillery battery is a unit ideally suited to the combat requirements of the 21st century, yet one that retains its soul.

Colonel Thomas G. Waller, Jr., has been the Director of the Gunnery Department of the Field Artillery School, Fort Sill, Oklahoma, since October 1998. In his previous assignment, he served as Chief of the Strategy Division in the Plans and Policy Directorate (J5) of Atlantic Command, Norfolk, Virginia. Also in the Gunnery Department, he was the Deputy Director and Chief of the Paladin New Equipment Training Team during the initial fielding of the M109A6 howitzer. Colonel Waller commanded two battalions: the 3d Battalion, 32d Field Artillery in the 41st Field Artillery Brigade in Germany and the 3d Battalion, 30th Field Artillery Regiment, part of the Field Artillery School at Fort Sill. During Operations Desert Shield and Storm, he was the Assistant Fire Support Coordinator for VII Corps. He holds a Master of Military Arts and Science from the Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas; a Master of Asian Studies from the University of Michigan; and a Master of Arts in National Security Studie s from the Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island.

Endnotes:

(1.) William Birkheimer, Historical Sketch of the Organization, Administration, Material and Tactics of the Artillery. United States Army (New York: Greenwood Press, 1968), 306.

(2.) Ibid. See also Frank E. Comparato, Age of Great Guns (Harrisburg: Pennsylvania, 1965), 180.

(3.) Ibid., 80.

(4.) Ibid., 55.

(5.) Other branches of artillery picked upon the traditions of the battery, from the siege batteries of heavy guns and mortars to the coastal batteries of long-range naval guns, to anti-aircraft and rocket artillery.

(6.) Boyd Dastrup, King of Battle (Fort Monroe: Virginia, 1992), 198-199.

(7.) FA Journal (November-December 1999), 20-22.

(8.) Major General Toney Stricklin, "Field Artillery: Relevant, Trained and Ready," FA Journal (September-October 1999), 1.

(9.) Preliminary discussions among working groups on Objective Force Organization and Operation Principles.

(10.) Richard Hart Sinnreich, "Army's New Medium-Weight Forces Must Show Resilience," The Lawton Constitution (Lawton: Oklahoma, 24 September 2000), 4A.

(11.) Birkheimer, 85.

(12.) Unpublished paper, Lieutenant Colonel Gray H. Cheek, "The Emperor is Wearing No Clothes: Why Joe Can't Get The Lead Cut," Senior Fire Support Trainer, National Training Center, Fort Irwin California, September 2000.

(13.) Birkheimer, 44.